Distribution and administration of satellite broadcast services require many processing tasks. Generally recipients of said services are required to purchase a satellite radio receiver, or receiver unit, and often they are required to maintain some sort of subscription payments to keep the satellite radio receiver, and thusly their service, active.
The process of authorizing and de-authorizing a receiver unit is often accomplished through the use of the satellite broadcast service itself. A certain amount of the service's bandwidth may be designated for such administrative tasks as these. As such communication is generally one-way, from the satellite to the receiver unit, there is not an obvious method for acquiring the authorization status of a receiver unit. In order to increase the likelihood that an administrative task is accomplished, the same authorization or de-authorization command is often sent repeatedly.
One method being used to acquire the authorization status of a receiver unit utilizes existing, landline communications. For example, a satellite broadcast service such as DIRECTV may require the unit to be attached to a standard phone line solely for the purpose of acquiring the DIRECTV receiver unit's authorization status.
The difficulties in administering satellite broadcast services are only exacerbated when brought into the mobile vehicle realm. The satellite broadcast service may be forced to send the same administration command twenty times over the course of several days in order to provide a statistical likelihood that the signal was sent during a time that the mobile vehicle was on, the receiver unit was also on and functioning, and the receiver unit was in an area with adequate signal reception to accept the command. This is wasteful of valuable satellite broadcast bandwidth, and also requires that the user alert the satellite broadcast service if an administrative command was not accomplished correctly.
The frequency and complexity of administrating satellite services increases if administrative authorization tasks are required beyond simple activation and deactivation of the service as a whole. The introduction of various basic and premium packages, or the introduction of pay-per-view packages would increase the importance of an improved strategy for acquiring a receiver unit's authorization status.
It would be desirable to provide a satellite broadcast service with an authorization status from a mobile vehicle in a manner that overcomes the above-described disadvantages.